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The Story of Pandora: A Fantasy Coloring Book – A Review

Disclaimer – Please read this disclosure about my use of affiliate links which are contained within this post.The Story of Pandora: A Fantasy Coloring Book is published and kindly sent to me to review by St Martin’s Griffin. It was originally published in Korea and has been translated into English, this is one of a series of three books, the other two can be found reviewed by me here: The Land of Dreams, Time of Memory. All of them are written by Kim Sun Huyn and Time of Memory is also illustrated by her, whereas the other two are illustrated by Song Geum Jin so their illustration style and content is very different. Just bear this in mind and check out reviews of all three to ensure you like them all.

This book is 25cm square, paperback, with soft feel flexible card covers with beautiful coloured imagery from inside the book and half page French flaps which are left blank on the insides. The spine is glue-bound which makes it fairly durable but does mean that you’ll lose a little of each image into it unless you crack the spine which will give you better access to the centre but could eventually lead to pages falling out so do be careful. The images are printed double-sided and are all double-page spreads, a large number of them do enter the spine. The paper is bright white, medium thickness and lightly textured, water-based pens ever so slightly shadowed when using dark colours but didn’t bleed at all, alcohol markers will bleed through, pencils layer and blend well as there’s a little bit of tooth. The images themselves tell the story of Pandora, a land where time stands still and fantasy animals come alive. There are a few pages with text written in paragraphs centrally which explain the story in broken English, I’m guessing the text hasn’t translated very well and has been done literally rather than being edited to make complete sense as some of the sentences seem very unrelated to each other and a bit random. The illustrations depict a girl travelling through Pandora, there are a number of features which are clearly from Alice in Wonderland including mushrooms, a White Rabbit, Drink Me labels on bottles, flamingos, playing cards and even the main character growing and shrinking so Alice fans will love this. The pages are all spreads with some containing randomly placed objects, some showing full-page scenes and others having a smaller image with lots of space around it where you could add your own drawings or backgrounds if you wish. At the back of the book is advice written by an Art Therapist where she describes ways in which art can help to relieve stress, and colour schemes that can be used for a peaceful state of mind. Following this are thumbnails of each image along with the title of the spread and a double-page spread left for you to add your own drawings.

In terms of mental health, this book offers a lot of escapism and transports you to a far off land where nothing is quite as it seems. The Story of Pandora has a lot of similarities with the familiar story of Alice in Wonderland and this brings with it feelings of nostalgia and fondness, especially to those of us who are huge Alice fans. The illustrations are very whimsical and fantastical and not overly realistic in composition so you can really go wild with your colour choices and have multi-coloured mushrooms, pastel coloured sheep and green flamingos if you wish. A few of the designs don’t completely fill the double-page spread and a couple have very large open spaces where you could easily add your own imagery or backgrounds if you wish, there are no written hints so you don’t have to add anything unless you want to, the page will look finished regardless. The line thickness is consistent throughout and is spindly thin. The intricacy and detail levels are consistent throughout and are very high, this is one of the most intricate books I’ve seen and it’s quite difficult to colour some of the most intricate parts so you’ll need exceedingly good vision and fine motor control, as well as a good level of concentration to identify each part and keep within the lines. This definitely isn’t a book for bad days, while flicking through it will surely absorb you and cheer you up, you’ll need to leave colouring it to your good days when you can concentrate properly and give it the time it deserves. Because this book tells a story it’s got great continuity and would make a wonderful keepsake when finished, you could add more of your own story if you wish. The illustration style and image layout is quite different from English and American books and it can take a little getting used to but it is really beautiful and looks even nicer coloured.

Overall, I would recommend this book to those who have very good vision and fine motor control, those who like Alice in Wonderland, and those who love to colour intricate, detailed storybook-style colouring books. It’s ideal for pencil colourists and will make a wonderful project to colour from beginning to end to turn into a keepsake.